


the waves

by iphido



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:40:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27056566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iphido/pseuds/iphido
Summary: Hakoda still dreamt of the waves.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 18





	the waves

**Author's Note:**

> content warning for brief descriptions of war violence, nausea, and drowning.
> 
> [what will i do without exile, and a long night that stares at the water?](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52549/who-am-i-without-exile)

Hakoda still dreamt of the waves, both asleep and awake. He dreamt he was on that boat, sailing to the edge of nowhere, and when he woke up he could still hear the roiling water through the wood. He stood completely still in the middle of the hut and felt as though he were swaying and the ocean was rolling under him. Every night his weapons lay beside his head, ready to draw blood.

It was something he would never tell his children: that, and a thousand others. Miqra bleeding out in his lap, his face charred beyond recognition. Water filling Hakoda’s lungs and the dark sea churning all around him before Bato tugged him to the surface. Losing a dozen battles and barely escaping with his life. Being stripped down to nothing, humiliated, spat on, slapped around until he was finally shoved into prisoner’s clothing. War paint on his face. Screaming his throat hoarse. Planning, always planning, deep into the night. Blood. Fire. Salt and sweat. Sea. 

Kya.

If Hakoda was glad for one thing on that horrible day, it was that his mother had held Sokka and Katara in her birdlike arms and kept them from pulling open the entrance to their home. That sight was Hakoda’s to bear and Hakoda’s alone. He had heard their wailing as he wrapped his wife in a sealskin pelt, cleaned the blood from the floor, folded up the rug. A week later, after the mourning period, he carried her body four miles to the edge of the ice. His father-in-law and her brothers were dead, so he completed the rites himself and sent her off on a raft, returning her to the ocean spirit.

It’d been years since he had entertained the what-ifs: _what if I’d been faster, what if I’d paid closer attention to the snowfall before it turned black, what if I’d given myself up instead_. He knew some part of his children still hated him for his shortcomings. He hated himself too. But there was no use dwelling on it. Katara was the finest waterbender alive because of Kya’s sacrifice, and so too was the war over, though not before digging its eternal claws in the hearts of his boy and his girl.

Hakoda wondered what kinds of things his children dreamed about. In the dead of night, he’d hear them cry awake with a shout or a sob. Sometimes he left his bed and wrapped Sokka in his arms, the way he did when Sokka was small; sometimes he let Katara cry into his chest as if she were seven again.

Sometimes his own memories were too heavy. On those nights he stared into the darkness and listened to their restless pacing and the whisper of the wind outside. If he could take their pain for himself, he would. Though he did not have the strength to bear it all. They were already a thousand times stronger than he was.

At supper, Katara would bend soup into Hakoda’s bowl and tell a tale from their travels. _Have we told you yet about the time a village tried to boil Aang?_ she’d ask, and launch into a story in that stilted way of hers. Sokka would interject and describe the aforementioned events in a highly dramatized fashion. Katara would disagree and insist on her version of events, Sokka would persist, Katara would get too exasperated and let Sokka take over. Hakoda always belly-laughed by the end of it, and he treasured that joy like it was his last meal.

Hakoda was Water Tribe and, by blood, never got seasick, but sometimes—

On long summer days Sokka walked with him through the newly built streets, overseeing the reconstruction of their tribe. Rebuilding was long and painful and joyous at once. The old making way for new. The pitiful scattering of homes in which he had raised his children lay on the outskirts of the new city. All the elders lived there; everyone else lived in the wintertown. He wondered how many more years the old village would last.

There was no telling what Hakoda would see in the town. He was Water Tribe and, by blood, never got seasick, but sometimes his stomach flipped on itself and his head swam and he’d take deep breaths to calm himself. He could never pick out what caused the nausea: maybe a butcher was skinning a sea buffalo and the smell of blood reached Hakoda’s nose; maybe a bird cawed overhead, sounding too much like a warhawk; maybe it was nothing at all, and he just needed a reminder that he’d never be free of it.

It was alright. During these moments Sokka would hold his elbow and clap his shoulder with a hand growing stronger every day. Katara was only ever a few blocks away at her new academy. His mother, not much farther.

Perhaps a part of Hakoda would always be on that boat, looking outward, carrying a hundred years’ worth of his people’s sorrows. He was Water Tribe, after all, and by blood, he belonged to the sea.

**Author's Note:**

> im just posting this before i start to hate it XD i hope u enjoyed this somewhat. anyway, i have loved this franchise dearly for over 13 years, and i really want to write more for these characters so stay tuned


End file.
